Stories
— A twelve-year-old faces peer pressure when her best friend Lauren shoplifts and tries to involve her, leading to difficult choices about friendship and integrity.
— A sixth-grader watches her imaginative pioneer game fall apart when popular kids mock it, realizing she and her friends are growing up and leaving childhood behind.
— During a military coup in Sierra Leone, a fifth-grader shelters with his embassy family, finding and symbolically discarding a bullet that represents the violence surrounding them.
— A five-year-old girl contemplates the nature of waiting after missing a horseback ride, discovering through conversation with her father that waiting gives life meaning.
— A five-year-old girl sits by a lake at sunset, contemplating why everything in life requires waiting, until her father helps her understand its purpose.
— A young artist who draws the sunrise every morning struggles with her mother's acting ambitions for her, then finds hope after losing an art contest when her grandmother offers to...
— Eight-year-old Soon-Soon Wang flees Cultural Revolution China for America after her parents are taken by the government, leaving behind her best friend Xiao-Long.
— A young climber encounters a cougar on a mountain ledge and saves herself by singing the same lullaby she once used to tame her childhood cat.
— A 10-year-old recounts Hannibal's ambush of Roman forces at Lake Trasimene in 217 BC, detailing military preparations, strategy, and the devastating Carthaginian victory.
— A nervous girl drives to her school play audition, battles stage fright, performs her monologue, and finds relief in having tried her best.